Nourishing your skin from the inside out makes sense, but few of us use this in practice. It’s easy to slap on drugstore sunscreen and spend hours outside but there are unseen, and often unacknowledged, dangers in conventional sunscreen. Protecting yourself from ultraviolet radiation is important in avoiding sunburns, sunspots, wrinkles, and dry, peeling skin, but some unprotected sunshine is also needed for optimal absorption of vitamin D.
Bitters hold their history in old European herbal medicinal traditions and used to serve the same purposes that tinctures do today. Tinctures are herbal extractions made by steeping dried or fresh herbs in a highly pure form of alcohol. Any part of the plant can be used to make tinctures, although some parts may render different effects than others. Commercial processes use ethyl alcohol, but for home crafted tinctures, 100 proof vodka is the best choice.
Edible mushrooms are fantastic for our health. Eating mushrooms is my favorite way to reap their benefits, but at times a stronger dose may come in handy. This is where mushroom extracts can be handy. For those who’ve purchased commercial mushroom extracts, you may have noticed that they’re a bit expensive. Why not learn to make your own?
Fascia is often referred to as the glue that holds us together, but few of us know what it is and why it matters. This article discusses the ways in which we can stretch our fascia to loosen tight muscles (believe it or not, tight hamstrings can actually be caused by a forward head lean) for both sports performance as well as a high quality of daily life.
Syrups are a great way to take your medicine and to spice things up in the kitchen. Here are a couple of easy syrup-making methods. The first method is the way to go for medicinal syrups that can also be used in recipes. You can use these by the spoonful daily. The second is just for introducing some exciting new flavors into your recipes rather than for medicinal usage.
Mary Beth Shaw is an energy healing practitioner with whom I recently enjoyed a session. The experience was a roller coaster of emotions that left me feeling more strongly connected to my Self and my loved ones, and also with a clearer vision of my purpose and personal priorities.
Are adaptogens the next best thing for the human health quotient? Or are they as overblown as the antioxidant theory? Make an informed decision…
Go to any nutritional or lifestyle coach and you’ll hear the term adaptogen bandied about quite a bit. So what are adaptogens? To understand that, let’s begin with what adaptogens aren’t.
“That’s what happens when you get old and don’t eat enough calcium.”
This statement gets repeated often enough it sounds like an old milk commercial. It’s referring to the increasing, sometimes dramatic, rounding of the middle and upper back that happens in some older people—is that really the result of a milk deficiency? And do some people start developing the beginnings of these changes, displaying some early evidence of rounding, much earlier?
Some of the most sacred and valued scents over the centuries are those deeper aromatics—Frankincense, Myrrh, Benzoin and others—whose use predates the millennia-old religious texts in which they’re noted. These scents are “heavier” because the chemicals they’re made of are heavier than those in “lighter” oils such as lemon or bergamot. Another way to look at it is that the scents
Grounding, also known as earthing, is a relatively new idea in the modern world, precisely because it didn’t exist in the past: we were already walking around in our bare feet, whether inside or outside, and the need to reduce electromagnetic currents wasn’t an issue since electronics like cellphones and laptops didn’t exist. Today, however, it isn’t uncommon to find grounding or earthing mats, mattresses, flip flops, sneakers, and even body bands that claim to equalize our bodies to the same energy as the earth.